Recount

PURPOSE: To tell past experience (what we or someone did, what took place) that is aimed at informing and entertaining

       TYPES:

• Personal recount ( retelling of an activity that the speaker/writer has been personally involved) e.g. oral anecdote, diary entry, biography

• Factual recount (recording the particulars of an incident e.g. police report, news report)
• Imaginative recount (taking on an imaginary role and giving details of events) e.g. a day in the life of ………

GENERIC STRUCTURE

1. ORIENTATION: provides information about the setting (when & where) and introduces participants/character (who)
2. EVENTS: tell what happened, in temporal sequence (personal comment/expression of evaluation)
3. RE-ORIENTATION (optional): Its closeure of events (e.g. comments or conclusion)

LANGUAGE FEATURES: 

• Noun and pronoun as substitution of person, animal, involved thing, E.g.: David, the Monkey, We, etc.
• Specific participants (Mr./Mrs ……, our dog, the thief)
• Using Past Tense
• Action verbs/material processes (went, slept, ran, caught, arrived, bought, looked at) E.g. He went to the zoo; She was happy. 
• Temporal sequence (on Friday, one day, at the beginning, in the end, first, then, next, before, later, finally, etc)

Narrative and recount in some ways are similar. Both are telling something in the past so narrative and recount usually apply PAST TENSE; whether Simple Past Tense, Simple Past Continuous Tense, or Past Perfect Tense. The ways narrative and recount told are in chronological order using time or place. Commonly narrative text is found in story book; myth, fable, folklore, etc while recount text is found in biography.

The thing that makes narrative and recount different is the structure in which they are constructed. Narrative uses conflicts among the participants whether natural conflict, social conflict or psychological conflict. In some ways narrative text combines all these conflicts. In the contrary, we do not find these conflicts inside recount text. Recount applies series of event as the basic structure.

Example of Analytical Exposition / Contoh Analytical Exposition

Bali Bomb

The bomb, in the resort of Kuta, destroyed the Sari Club and a crowded nightspot. Many people have fallen victims to this blast. Many of them were foreign tourists, especially from Australia. They were burner beyond recognition. Some tourist who were at the scene of the blast said there were two explosions around the nightclub. One bomb had exploded outside Paddy’s Bar before a Bar bomb hit the Sari Club which was located some meters away.


Hundred were injured in the explosion and about 220 Australians remain unaccounted for. The U.K. Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said that 33 Britons were among those killed in the Bali attack. The Australian Primer Minister, John Howard, called its borders, saying it had been a problem for a long time.


Lists of missing people have been posted in Bali and official said that it could take days to identity all the victims, some of whom were trapped in the Sari Club by a wall of flames. A notice board at the hospital in Bali includes a section called “Unknown Identity” and detailed list on victims such as : “Young girl in intensive care, 11-14 years old, face burned, income, Causation,” or “Girl in intensive care, about 5 years old, 130 cm, fair skin, Caucasian with reddish brown hair. She has a purplish belly button ring.”


Many embassies, including the British and the American, are advising their people to cancel spending their planned holidays in Indonesia, and all U.S. citizens in the country have been told to leave including diplomats and non-essential government staff.

source:

Cambridge University press book - Interchange Acticvity 1 

Example/Contoh Recount Text lainnya: